Fame Jam

Making millions for NBA Stars: the high-powered world of super agents David Falk, Curtis Polk and Mike Higgins.

Wedges of half-eaten cheesecake form a circle in front of the
people seated at the round table inside Madison Square Garden's Suite
200. As he walks in, David Falk quickly notices that George
Steinbrenner, trademark white turtleneck and all, is standing next to
the table. Falk puts his hand on the arm of the principal owner of the
world champion New York Yankees.

"George, I'm David Falk. I just wanted to say hello," Falk says.

"Hi, David, are you in from Chicago?" asks Steinbrenner, a friend of
cigar smoker Jerry Reinsdorf, principal owner of the world champion
Chicago Bulls and the Chicago White Sox, with whom Falk does a lot of
business.

"No, from D.C.," Falk replies.

"Oh, you're in Washington," Steinbrenner says. After a few more
pleasantries, Falk gets a pat on the arm from Steinbrenner and is off
into the room that provides sanctuary to celebrities and VIPs during
halftime of the game between the New York Knicks and Houston Rockets,
two teams in which Falk has significant interests.

"We represent three players in this game," Falk says.

The 46-year-old Falk is the founder, chairman and chief executive
officer of FAME, or Falk Associates Management Enterprises. But in
this room, David Falk, 6-foot-2 out of Syracuse followed by George
Washington University Law, is better known as the agent to Knicks star
Patrick Ewing, as well as Knicks rookie Walter McCarty. On the
Rockets, FAME represents rookie Othella Harrington.

Soon after introducing himself to Steinbrenner, Falk is studying the
crowd like a raptor. Not a Toronto Raptor, but one of the voracious
deoxyribonucleosaurs in the movie Jurassic Park. This is not a bad
thing to be in this room, where comedian Billy Crystal is holding
court, Patrick McEnroe has people asking why he is no longer on the
tennis court and Falk is getting something to eat because he won't be
going to dinner until after the game being played on the court. Game?
What game?

Falk is talking to Ken Ross, his friend and co-executive producer
of the movie Space Jam, when a representative from the Nickelodeon
network introduces herself and earnestly explains to Falk something
about a new project that he might want to present to "Michael or
Patrick." As in Jordan or Ewing. Falk is gracious. Hey, who knows? He
tells the woman that he would be glad to look at the project and she
should send it to him in Washington. Ms. Nickelodeon thanks Falk and
is gone a matter of seconds before Andy from American Express
virtually beams into her spot.

"David," Andy says, "remember me? I came down to Washington to
talk to you about Michael?"

"Absolutely," Falk says, not missing a beat. "You need to make
another trip down so that we can talk about Patrick."

"All right," Andy says. "Was everything OK with Michael?"

"Oh, yeah," Falk says, then pauses. He scans the room, then puts
his arm around Andy and motions with his head for him to move to a
quiet corner. Rob Urbach, FAME's vice president of marketing, walks
over with them.

Representing so many players in one National Basketball
Association game is not unusual for Falk and partners Curtis Polk, the
37-year-old president and chief operating officer of FAME as well as a
lawyer and certified public accountant; and Michael Higgins, FAME's
senior vice president, who turns 38 in May, who began his career as a
Hollywood agent.

The three had worked together in the team sports division that
Falk headed at Washington, D.C.'s ProServ, an agency that has
traditionally focused on individual sports. They left in 1992 to form
FAME so they could concentrate on representing athletes in team
sports. Now, Falk, Polk and Higgins are the elite members of an
increasingly important group in the sports world: the small cadre of
financially sophisticated agents who possess marketing expertise. In a
time of increasing competition for the entertainment dollar, they
represent clients who have notoriously short careers and need to
secure strong financial futures quickly. For the FAME partners, this
all adds up to very long hours and between 150 and 200 days a year
spent on the road. All three share a way to relax: they smoke premium
cigars.

"I wouldn't say I'm a heavy smoker of cigars. I've probably smoked
cigars on and off for about 10 years. Probably in the last three years
I've gotten a good supply of up-brand cigars," says Falk, a man who,
in his own field, is often instrumental in defining what the up-brands
are. "It's like a good wine; you start to appreciate the better
ones. I really started enjoying smoking cigars while playing
cards. I'd say in the last year, I've probably smoked six a
month. Normally, one or two a week. I love Cohibas and I love Hoyo de
Monterreys. They're so smooth. You come to appreciate those
things. Three or four years ago I wouldn't have known. I have a lot of
Cohiba Robustos, and a friend gave me the longer Hoyo de Monterreys,
the double corona."

While Falk doesn't smoke at home in front of his two daughters, he
indulges himself on the road. He is careful, however, to pursue cigars
as his own personal passion, and not merely because they have become
trendy. "I'm almost fighting myself," he says, chuckling. Falk can
afford as many of the best cigars that he wants, yet he says, "I don't
want it to become a fad. I want to enjoy it. To me it's more like
drinking a great wine. I don't drink it every day and I don't smoke a
cigar every day. When I smoke them, I really enjoy them." He says
smoking a cigar slowly helps him leave behind a bit of the "cutthroat
world of celebrity representation."

Falk attributes the success of FAME to the diverse strengths of
its partners. He considers that his major role is to bring experience,
creativity and instincts to the partnership. "Curtis is my
consigliere, if you will, and I think he's brilliant," Falk says. "I
think he's strategic. I think he's analytical. And I think he's 100
percent committed to me and to this office. He advises, and I
invariably follow his advice. I don't know that I always agree, but I
invariably follow his advice.

"Then Michael comes in," he adds, referring to the graduate of the
University of Southern California and Whittier Law School, who looks
like an ex-football player. "Michael Higgins is probably much more of
a people person than either of us." Higgins partied until 5:30
a.m. with a few of FAME's rookies during the All-Star break in
Cleveland. To protect the innocent, the details cannot be
reported. Falk praises Higgins' commitment and loyalty to the
firm. "I'm a great believer that when you form a team, you should
never be afraid to have people who have equal talents or even better
talents than you do," says Falk.

No one doubts that, even though FAME is a partnership, it could
easily be called "Team Falk." Basketball Digest has ranked Falk as the
second-most powerful person in the NBA, subordinate only to league
commissioner David Stern. Since 1991, The Sporting News has placed
Falk in the top 32 on its list of the "100 Most Powerful People in
Sports." And in 1995, Advertising Age named Falk one of the top 50
marketers in the United States. Falk enjoys the honors, but
nevertheless believes that focusing on him sells FAME short.

"A player will gravitate to one person. It's not always to me. A
lot of the younger players sort of gravitate to Mike. Like Bobby
Hurley or Calbert Cheaney," Falk says, protesting that he gets too
much of the credit. Then he lapses into coach language: "We present
different looks. I think each of us could be successful in our own
right, but to use the most overworked term of the decade, I think we
have a synergy."

Synergy was very good for FAME last year. During a one-week period
last summer, the company negotiated 13 salary contracts--for eight
free agents and five rookies--that totaled $410 million. The players'
union sets 4 percent as the maximum that agents can charge a player
for negotiating a contract. At that rate, FAME's cut of the 13
contracts could be as much as $16.4 million (the partnership doesn't
always charge the maximum fee).

Polk came up with the strategy and all the deals were handled from
FAME's "war room." "We just set it up in our conference room and had a
big chart, computers; we had all the numbers and we put up all the
teams," Higgins recalls with delight. "We had six phones put in and
everything. We had so many deals to negotiate. It's a discussion: 'All
right, this is what's been put on the table. Are you talking to
Houston?'" Each agent looked out for the interests of all the firm's
clients, whether or not he had worked directly with a particular
client, Higgins says. "I have a relationship with [president and
general manager] Stu Jackson of the Vancouver Grizzlies who I talk to
on a daily basis and who might have some [salary] cap room, and they
might be interested in a Chris Gatling [now of the New Jersey Nets],
and yet I don't work with Chris on a day-to-day basis. But I was
talking to them about offering Chris a deal this summer, although we
did a deal with Dallas."

Falk, Polk and Higgins were constantly on the phone while in
simultaneous communication with each other--kind of a "three-headed
monster," Higgins says.

The agents of FAME had to move fast. They did a deal for Michael
Jordan first: 45 minutes, $30 million, one year. Nothin' but net. They
made a pact for Bullets forward Juwan Howard to go to Miami for $101
million, then secured $105 million for Mourning with the same
team. But the league later voided Howard's contract, ruling that Miami
had violated the salary cap regulations. The decision left Howard
without a contract and in serious jeopardy of taking a 50 percent pay
cut because most of the teams by that time had considerably less room
under the salary cap to match the $101 million agreement. Polk had to
scramble to get a $105 million deal by which Howard would remain with
the Bullets for seven years. Left out was Chapman, who had played for
Miami the year before.

"We had a certain position because of the power of an Alonzo
Mourning and Miami's desire to sign Juwan Howard to really leverage
Miami and to force them to do Rex's deal first," Falk says. "Out of
respect for Pat Riley--I said it before the thing started and I'll say
it again, I have great respect for Pat Riley; there's no doubt he's
one of the great coaches in the game and maybe one of the great
coaches ever and he's very competitive and I respect that because so
am I--I didn't want to leverage Pat Riley or [Heat owner] Mickey
Arison. I think when we took the pressure off and [Riley] had a
different vision of how he wanted to construct the team, I'm not sure
that we brought maximum leverage to bear on behalf of Rex Chapman, so
I thought I'd let him down."

Miami made offers that Chapman and Falk considered too low and
Chapman ultimately landed in Phoenix with a one-year contract, still a
FAME client, but not nearly as rich as he and his agent had
hoped. What happened to Chapman is not Falk's first disappointment and
it surely won't be his last, though usually they don't involve clients
already in the FAME family.

"I would say that my greatest disappointment probably was not
being selected by Grant Hill to represent him. I'm a huge fan of Grant
Hill and his family," Falk says of the third-year Detroit Pistons
guard. Hill's father is former Dallas Cowboys running back Calvin Hill
and his mother, Janet, is a high-powered Washington consultant. Hill
has done quite well in the endorsement market, and his basketball
talents are often compared with Jordan's at the same point in his
career.

Falk says that it was his experience with Jordan--making mistakes
and learning from them--that made him want to bring his knowledge to
bear for Hill. "All of a sudden you have a young player who's very
special and you don't have a chance to take all [your own] special,
unique knowledge-- and it is unique-- and put it to work for him. It
was a disappointment. I'm not angry about it."

Polk, a University of Maryland alumnus, describes a similar
disappointment with U.M. forward Joe Smith: "I thought that Joe and I
hit it off and could relate to each other very well. I had the
advantage of being able to spend a lot of time with him because
Maryland is just down the road here. I think that his college coach
likes us and respects us and knows that we're good at what we do."

Polk says he feels that the agency sometimes loses players
because others around them--family and friends--lead them into bad
decisions based on their own agendas. "We tend to put a lot of heart
into the effort to get the kids, and you feel that if they could
really look at it on the merits, we should get [them as clients]."

A second-year player with the Golden State Warriors, Smith has
yet to develop a large marketing portfolio. One wonders if Falk's and
Polk's declarations of regret are not just telegraphed invitations to
Detroit and Oakland: There's still room for you at FAME. Grant, babe!
Joe, buddy! Guys, are you listening?

Sometimes simply having so many big fish as clients can dissuade
new players from signing on, although Polk insists that FAME works
equally hard for all its clients. FAME serves as agent to nearly 40
NBA players and another 15 in football, baseball and overseas
basketball. Of these, of course, one stands out: Michael
Jordan. Falk's representation of Jordan goes back more than a dozen
years, even before he started his firm. He calls Jordan the most
famous person in the world. Falk should know. By all accounts, much of
Jordan's fame is due to the efforts of FAME.

"Most outside observers spend hours trying to analyze: 'Did
Michael Jordan carry David Falk along for a nice ride for the past 12
years?' Other people wonder: 'Did Dr. Frankenstein Falk create Michael
Jordan in a laboratory somewhere?' Michael and David haven't spent
three minutes in 12 years worrying about it." Sitting in an
overstuffed blue leather chair in his Washington office, Falk
dismisses the question. "We just concluded that it's been great. For
me, it's been a tremendous honor to have a chance to work with the
greatest athlete in history, with someone I have great fondness for as
a human being, for whom I have great respect as a man and whose
loyalty to me personally I appreciate."

Working with FAME has helped make Michael Jordan a tremendously
wealthy man, and there are clear indications that the partners of FAME
are also doing quite well. Agents typically receive 20 percent of the
revenue from endorsements and other off-the-court deals. By some
estimates, Jordan has amassed close to $200 million from Nike,
Gatorade, Coca-Cola, cologne and cartoons. Two of Jordan's recent
non-basketball ventures were sheperded by FAME: "Michael Jordan," the
fragrance made by the Beverly Hills designer Bijan, was cited as the
best marketed product of 1996 by the American Marketing Association,
and Jordan's first cinematic turn came last fall with Space Jam, an
animated joint venture between FAME and Warner Brothers.

Understand that in no way does Falk take Jordan for granted. Any
NBA player can say goodbye to his agent by giving 15 days'
notice. And, according to Falk, his "business marriage" with Jordan
did not start out as a particularly close one.

"I think for the first four or five years he intentionally kept me
at arm's length, watching, evaluating," Falk remembers. "I think
things happened probably after the fourth year where I passed
muster. I think that it's a measure of his intelligence that he
wouldn't press a button and sign with somebody and say, 'OK, I trust
you now because I've signed with you.' He wanted me to prove myself,
and I think that's exactly the way it should be. You've got to stand
the test of time." Now they are friends who compete to exchange, um,
compliments.

"A lot of people don't like David, but he's the best at what he
does," Jordan told USA Today last year. "What he does is get
underneath your skin, whoever he's negotiating with, because he
figures out what your objectives are, your angles. He understands the
market; he understands the players. He's a brash, arrogant,
egotistical, aggressive negotiator, which is good, because when you
have someone represent you, you want him to do that. Marketing-wise,
he's great. He's the one who came up with the concept of 'Air Jordan.'
"

It is a measure of their closeness that Falk and Curtis Polk were
among the few non-family members who gathered with Jordan after his
father was murdered in North Carolina. It was soon after that the
superstar had his stint in baseball's minor leagues. "Baseball is
something Michael has always loved," Falk explains. "It was a
challenge for him to play baseball and something that his father had
encouraged him to do, actually after he won his first NBA
championship. I thought it was terrific that someone who had
accomplished everything that could possibly be accomplished in a
career could take on a great new challenge to do something he truly
loved."

The hiatus did little to diminish FAME's business or Jordan's
stature as a celebrity. It might be argued that coming back to win a
fourth NBA title may only have enhanced his appeal. If his salary as a
player took a temporary dive, his endorsement income never skipped a
beat.

Balls. FAME is really about balls. Lots of balls. Walking into the
swank suite of offices in Washington's Chevy Chase Pavillion, one sees
appliqués of footballs, baseballs and basketballs on the glass
wall entrance. Real basketballs signed by FAME clients rest in glass
cases shared with Wheaties boxes and huge basketball shoes endorsed by
clients. Move back to Curtis Polk's office and there are jerseys from
Patrick Ewing and Glen Rice in frames, alongside an animation cel from
a Nike commercial. In Hollywood-hip, Curtis Polk is money, baby.

"Take Juwan Howard, for example," says Polk, who handled the
second career contract of the Washington Bullets star, who turned out
to be 1996's most sought-after and most embattled free agent. "The guy
signs for $105 million and obviously he should be very set financially
for the rest of his life based upon that. If you didn't do other
aspects of work for him, you wouldn't have a lot to interact with him
[about] over seven years.

"Where I think we really provide a lot of valuable services is in
working with them after the contract and making sure that they don't
go through their money, that they don't make bad investments, that
they don't fall prey to people who are trying to take advantage of
them, that we can insulate them from all the things that are going on
around them."

This is the part of the business that fans and many reporters
don't appreciate. Unlike a lot of agencies, FAME not only negotiates a
player's contract, but also maintains a 25-person team of lawyers,
financial planners, investment advisers, schedule makers, publicists
and marketers. Financial planning and investment services are
provided--for a minimum annual fee of $12,000--by a second company
also named FAME, in this case "Financial Advisory Management
Enterprises," which manages more than $130 million for about 18
clients.

It is a much-needed service in a world where players must
concentrate almost solely on the game to succeed, but are confronted
with a recruiting system that appeals to their sense of greed, while
attracting parasites that show up as early as junior high school. As a
result, many successful NBA candidates are ill-prepared to handle
instant millionaire status and the microscopic attention and financial
pitfalls that can come with it. As part of the service, Polk sits down
with the players in a whirlwind accounting clinic and shows them on a
spreadsheet where the money goes.

"Show him how much has to go to taxes. Forty-one percent, roughly,
in federal taxes. State? Depends on where you live, but roughly 3 to 9
percent in state taxes. So it gets up to the high 40s, 50
percent. They pay us a few percent of the gross, union dues," Polk
says. "Then I work with them on their expenses. Do they have a
mortgage? Are they renting? Some of these guys have two places where
they live, one in the city that they play in and another place, like
their hometown where they grew up, [where they] live in the
off-season. Maybe they're sending their parents some money every
month. You know, they have certain expenses that are recurring every
month, and we'll show them, after all is said and done, 'Here's what
you have left.'"

Polk often draws up a budget for players and urges them to save
because they will not be playing ball all their lives. The average
length of service in the NBA is about five years. Polk says it's hard
to tell anyone not to spend money, especially when you're talking
about millions and the young player--more than half of the players in
last year's draft were underclassmen--thinks that amount of money is
going to last forever.

"The average person that we represent, if they can have 30 to 35
percent that they're saving, they're doing well," Polk estimates. "A
guy at $100 million, I would hope that it's closer to 40 percent. If
they spent a million dollars a year living, that's a great
lifestyle. If half went to taxes and fees and whatnot, and they spent
10 percent, 40 percent's left. A guy saves $40 million of $100 million
and he bought tax-free bonds and he got 5 percent." (In the
beginning, players are generally risk-averse investors. ) "So, he's
got two million a year coming in forever, but his $40 million's not
gonna grow unless he saves some of that two million that comes
in. That's one way to show a guy a very low-risk way of taking your
money and using it to support a comfortable lifestyle for the next 30
or 40 years."

Most people hear about agents only when a player signs a one-year,
$30 million contract or leaves a city to play for another team for
more money. When that happens, agents typically get the
blame. Sportswriters such as Tony Kornheiser of The Washington Post
refer to them in such endearing terms as "Benedict Arnold," "bird of
prey" and "imperious." Who needs that?

"If you spend a lot of your time worrying about the criticism and
defending yourself, you're not going to be able to do what you're
hired to do," Falk says. "I won't say I like the criticism. I don't
think it's a compliment if someone says you have your own agenda, but
I think at the end of the day, the people I worry most about are the
people I work for, and I don't think too many of them think I have my
own agenda. I don't think any of them feel it."

When Falk needs advice on handling bad press, he turns to his own
clients--Jordan and Ewing. "You don't have to defend yourself," Jordan
has said on more than one occasion, according to Falk. "Your record
speaks for itself."

Michael Higgins recalls talking to an old friend who lit into him
about the evils visited upon the sports world by agents: "He goes,
'God, you guys rape and pillage!' " Higgins' response was simple: "If
Jim Carrey can get $20 million for The Cable Guy, Michael Jordan
making $30 million a year is not a big deal."

"We're always the first villain," adds Polk, who points out that
newspapers rarely dedicate daily coverage to movie salaries, but
almost always have a sports page in which coverage of money matters is
routine. "We didn't walk in with ski masks on and a gun in our hands
and say, 'We gotta have this much money.' These guys have the power to
say no."

Falk's position is closer to a life-affirming mantra: "Sports is
entertainment. The age where people say sports is like entertainment
is over. Sports is entertainment. It's billion-dollar entertainment."

Business wasn't always so good in the NBA. Go back fewer than 20
years and the league was moribund. "In the '80s the NBA was perceived
as too drug-infested, too black, [with] failing franchises," recalls
Armen Keteyian, a cigar smoking sports correspondent for ABC News and
co-author with Martin F. Dardis and Harvey Araton of Money Players:
Days and Nights Inside the New NBA (Pocket Books Hardcover,
$23.95). "It was sort of looked upon as the weak stepsister of the
NFL and just sort of didn't have any image. It was dying."

But since David Stern became commissioner in 1984, the 50-year-old
NBA has seen unprecedented expansion and astronomical revenue
growth. The income created by spinoffs is incalculable, but the NBA
licensing alone produces at least $1 billion a year by most
estimates. It is, to borrow a phrase from Dick Vitale, Awesome, Baby!

But with economic gain has come, according to Araton, the loss of
a "certain sense of family."

"The league was essentially like a mom-and-pop run operation,"
recalls Araton, who writes a sports column for The New York
Times. "It's just become so big and so successful that it's now more
like a giant corporation. The main focus of the league is really to
sell, sell and sell. It's kind of the Nike of sports leagues. You
know, Nike is push-push, drive-drive, sell-sell. The NBA is kind of
along the same track: Put a logo on it, throw a couple of celebrities
in, play some rock music or rap music, and just kind of throw it out
there and let it be consumed."

It's hard to argue with the prosperity that this financial and
marketing juggernaut has wrought, but Araton maintains that the
standards of success have been diminished. "Jordan is in a league by
himself," Araton says. "The guys like [Golden State Warrior] Latrell
Sprewell and [Washington Bullet] Chris Webber and [L.A. Laker]
Shaquille O'Neal, they're all corporate-manufactured superstars and
celebrities. They basically reap the benefits that the early guys set
up for them. Most people agree that they really haven't done anything
to earn it. I know that the guys like Jordan and Magic Johnson and
Larry Bird feel, in effect, that [the young players] are fabricated
stars."

FAME is unquestionably in step with this "market-the-stars"
philosophy, but its role is much more personal. Keteyian, who in 1991
co-wrote, with Alexander Wolff, Raw Recruits, which revealed the
darker side of college recruiting, contends that FAME does business
aggressively but honestly. "From everything I can see," says Keteyian,
"David uses every bit of leverage he can to get his athletes the very
best deal."

Fighting for its clients has sometimes meant very public battles
between FAME and the league, including last year's much-publicized
fight over the NBA's collective bargaining agreement. The uglier, very
personal characterizations of the battle had Stern as the scourge of
players' rights and Falk as the personification of the self-serving
agent. While many players spoke out, the assumption was that Falk was
putting words in the mouths of three of the more prominent dissidents,
Jordan, Ewing and Mourning.

In the end, the players ratified a revised collective bargaining
agreement that lessened the restrictions placed on them. Basketball
Digest wrote, "Although he didn't prevent the agreement from being
ratified by the league's players, Falk played a significant role in
leveraging the owners to secure a better deal for the players than was
initially offered."

Falk disputes the size of his role, pointing out that everyone at
these very high levels has advisers. "Patrick [Ewing] really was the
leader, but all three [Ewing, Jordan and Mourning] were very
active. Everybody basically accused them of being my mouthpiece and
yet nobody would say that David Stern had a lawyer. He had an army of
lawyers," Falk says. "I'm not a Svengali, I can't hypnotize them and
make them follow a certain party line, but certainly I'm going to do
my best to advise them of what's in their best interest, whether it's
popular or unpopular publicly. That's my job."

Players notice how well FAME performs.

"If there's one thing of which NBA players are cognizant, it's
money," Keteyian sums up. "When they see Juwan Howard get $105 million
to stay in Washington or they see Alonzo Mourning sign a huge deal,
they know who did the deal."

During a midseason game between the Washington Bullets and the
visiting Milwaukee Bucks, Michael Higgins is mildlyanguished by
Washington's Calber Cheaney's form at the foul line. "What kind of
shot is that?!" Higgins exclaims. "Ugly!" he answers himself, as the
ball bounces off the rim. "You know, the coaches fool around with
their shooting and they forget their natural form."

After the game, Higgins is on the opposite side of the USAir Arena
exchanging hugs and kisses with Cheaney's family, fiancée and
friends. He is waiting for Cheaney to emerge from the locker room,
which only the Bullets place off limits to agents. Higgins wants to
talk to Cheaney about how he is doing under the new Bullets coach,
Bernie Bickerstaff. It's a quiet discussion near the stands and
Cheaney is saying that things are going pretty well.

"You know, sometimes players don't play well with some teams, and
when they go to another team, they just fit in better," Higgins
says. "The same applies to coaches and their new teams, and the sports
agents as well."

Shortly before lunch, the phone in Polk's office rings. Allen
Iverson, the Philadelphia 76ers rookie guard, is on the line. Polk
excuses himself and walks with the cordless phone to the door. "Allen,
how you doin', buddy? Where are you, New York?" Polk says, his voice
revealing his Brooklyn roots.

After hanging up with Iverson, Polk, Higgins and FAME's director
of media services, Alyson Sadofsky, are in Polk's Lexus LX 450 on the
way to lunch at Ozio, the downtown Washington cigar and martini bar
where Polk and Falk have lockers and can find a safe place to light
up.

"Only in the last two to three years have I started to smoke a
little more socially," Polk says as he puts on his ever-cool Revo
sunglasses while negotiating D.C.'s midday traffic. "You know, back
then, '84, '85, if you tried to smoke anywhere--even when people
weren't as hyper as they are now about cigarette smoking--they'd get
on you for smoking cigars. Now in these buildings you can't smoke. I
mean, I've heard stories about the 'smoking police' from a building
coming into somebody's firm saying, 'Hey, we understand so-and-so's
smoking a cigar in the building. This is a nonsmoking building.' Now
there's a lot of restaurants and lounges where you can smoke cigars,
so for the last two years I've gotten in the habit of smoking a couple
a week.

"In the summer, I'll smoke two [double coronas] on the golf course
and I'll try to play golf at least once a week," Polk adds. "I like
smoking in the morning. A lot of times when I'm traveling, I'll wake
up in the morning and if I'm not doing anything immediately, I'll just
light up in my room and watch the news."

Polk shares Falk's taste for Cohibas and Hoyo double coronas, but
says, "I'm a fast smoker. I just love to puff on it." He complains
about how difficult it is to get his hands on large Cuban cigars, but
confides that he has discovered a possible solution. "I've gotten
friendly with a few people who work in embassies and they're really
good people to know for cigars because they can bring them back in,"
he says, wondering whether it's a good idea to share this
intelligence. "There's always somebody from an embassy who's bringing
in a pouch."

"Growing up in Las Vegas," Higgins joins in, "everybody smoked
cigars. I mean, I was probably a weekend warrior [smoker] in high
school because my best friend's father was from Steubenville, Ohio,
where all the gangsters came from," he says with a laugh.

"Steubenville, Ohio?" Polk asks, puzzled.

"Yeah, he was one of these guys that never didn't have a stogie in
his mouth," Higgins says. "That was my first experience where you
start trying cigars. I did a lot in college primarily because it was a
weekend thing. I didn't know about Montecristos or Cohibas. You might
have smoked a Macanudo or Partagas. There wasn't much of a variety, or
at least I didn't know. Whatever you were handed or whatever you could
get your hands on is what you smoked."

Higgins, who oversees FAME's basketball operations, says that he
smokes more when he's on the road and will try to find good Cuban
cigars when he's in Vancouver checking on Grizzlies client Bryant "Big
Country" Reeves, or when he's in Toronto checking out the
Raptors. "Nowadays, I'm in Vancouver a lot, Curtis goes to
Toronto. You can go up there and get anything you want," Higgins says.

Polk, fresh off a visit to Canada, disagrees. "There's nothing in
Toronto," he reports with some despair. "A price increase is going
into effect, so people have just bought the shelves out."

Once inside Ozio, Polk proudly opens his locker and offers his
companions their choice of several Cuban cigars. Higgins takes a
Montecristo No. 3. Polk takes a Cohiba Robusto. Sadofsky accepts a
small Dutch cigar, the third she will have ever smoked. Sitting down
to lunch, Polk recommends the grilled chicken sandwich, then orders
the pasta for himself. By the time lunch is served, he is already
halfway through the cigar.

Halftime at the Garden, the Knicks are losing to the Rockets by
three at the half and Falk is still upstairs in VIP land saying hello
to people whose faces are familiar but whose names have
evaporated. Relief comes when the second half starts and Falk returns
with Ross to their courtside seats, about four down from Spike, eight
down from Alec Baldwin, just around the corner from Woody and Soon-Yi,
and a few rows in front of David Halberstam. The Knicks come back in
an exciting, if sloppy, show to beat the Rockets by four. Minutes
later, Falk is standing next to Ernie Grunfeld, the Knicks general
manager (profiled in the Autumn 1996 Cigar Aficionado), in the
tunnel leading to the locker rooms. Falk and Grunfeld are likely to be
meeting a lot more after the season when Ewing's contract expires and
he becomes a free agent. But there's time for that after the playoffs.

"A guy just gave me a Romeo y Julieta Churchill," Grunfeld says
enthusiastically about the Cuban cigar. "It was great. You ever have
one?"

"I like the Hoyo de Monterreys," Falk counters. Then he proudly
pulls out a Dominican Fuente Fuente Opus X double corona. "I just got
this tonight."

Grunfeld takes it out of Falk's hand and examines it
admiringly. "What is this? Ooh, I never had one of these," he
says. Falk is waiting to take Patrick Ewing and Othella Harrington to
dinner. Now on opposing pro teams, they each played for Georgetown
University, in different eras, under John Thompson, the only coach who
is a FAME client. Critics claim that Thompson is FAME's pipeline to
Hoyas players. It's now 11:10 p.m. Falk will not get to sleep before
two.

"Having an agent is not so important in negotiating a contract,
but it's tremendously important for the second contract," says
Grunfeld, alluding to the league's wage scale that caps how much a
rookie can make according to when he was picked in the draft. "Having
the right agent," Grunfeld adds, motioning towards Falk, "is key in
positioning a player and marketing him. Agents can really help players
handle their business, but not all agents do that. A guy like David
also helps the players take care of their money."

Harrington comes out of the locker room and starts walking with
Falk and Ewing to the garage reserved for players and VIPs. The
Rockets rookie agrees with Grunfeld about the value of getting a good
agent.

"It's extremely important to get the right representation,"
Harrington says. "You know that if they're handling the business, you
can concentrate on playing ball. It keeps your mind at ease."
Harrington, the first pick in last year's second round, has convinced
the experts with his play that he should have gone in the first
round. Though he makes $220,000 under the terms of the rookie wage
scale's minimum one-year contract, he is also included in a group
endorsement deal with Signature Rookies and Classic trading cards
worth about $30,000. He also has an unusual two-year
"guaranteed-dollar" deal with Nike.

FAME's attention to Kerry Kittle's business interests is what has
allowed him to emerge as "the best player" from the 1996 draft,
according to his New Jersey Nets teammate Jayson Williams. "Some kids
come in, they're worried about their sneakers, their commercials,
their money," Williams, who does not use FAME, told Phil Jasner of the
Philadelphia Daily News in January. "This kid [Kittles] loves to play,
doesn't care anything about the business aspects, just loves to play
ball. Of course, if you have David Falk representing you, why should
you worry about business?"

Falk has many battle scars. He's been sued several times and so
many bad things have been said about him, one would understand if he
just cashed in his chips. But if anyone doubts that David Falk is a
competitor of the first order, they don't understand his motivation
for doing what he can to help his clients: "I think the American dream
is to make as much money as you can and have a choice of what you want
to do that makes you happy." Despite an overwhelming number of
business possibilities, Falk isn't planning to expand the
firm. Instead, he wants to spend more time with his family and his
charity work--among other projects, producing a regional telethon for
leukemia research and raising money for the United Negro College Fund.

As far as FAME's future is concerned, Falk and his colleagues plan
to focus on generating post-NBA "opportunities" for the likes of
superstars Jordan and Ewing. Falk has other goals: he wants his
partners to get more of the credit for FAME's success; he may write a
book about business; he would like FAME to be involved in making more
movies. Most of all, Falk doesn't want to miss out on the rapidly
expanding world of new media; he says FAME is uniquely positioned to
capitalize on those opportunities.

"We would like to be, over the next 10 years, one of the groups
that's instrumental in forging the marriage between sports as a sports
form and entertainment as an entertainment form, to meld the two. I
think Space Jam represents an effort in that direction. Our joint
venture with Warner Brothers and the six players represents an effort
in that direction," Falk says of the movie that had grossed more than
$200 million worldwide through February, a figure that is still
climbing (the numbers don't include video rentals and sales or
merchandising). "We're investigating a number of opportunities right
now. We're talking to some entertainment groups that want to be more
in a sports environment," Falk adds. "I don't think we started it, but
we want to be at the forefront of it."

In the category of opportunities, one potentially record-setting
piece of FAME business is coming up this summer: Michael Jordan will
be a free agent at the end of the season. Rest assured the Cohiba
Robustos and Hoyo de Monterrey double coronas are ready for the
celebration.